24 Feb 2021
Covid-19, Networking Permalink

How to Network During a Pandemic

February 24, 2021
It is 2021, a new year. But there is one thing that is still the same: we are in a global pandemic. The coronavirus pandemic is far from being over, but there does appear to be hope on the horizon. Many companies have now released effective vaccines, and populations worldwide are beginning to get their first doses of them. However, we will likely have to adhere to strict public health guidelines for the time being. This includes social distancing, wearing masks, staying six feet apart in public, etc. Despite the abnormality of a pandemic, there are still everyday things that we all need to do that can’t always be put on hold, such as job hunting or networking. So how do we do these things safely?

Use the Time you Have to Master a New Skill

The global pandemic has forced us to spend less time outside and more time indoors to keep ourselves and each other safe. Staying home for such long periods can feel monotonous, but there are ways in which you can use this time to your advantage. With the extra time, we all have, now is the perfect time to enroll in an online course to help build new skills or polish old ones. If you need a job, which many of us are, fostering a new skill set can help you get a step closer to getting one. Many digital platforms cater to online learning and allow you to receive certifications upon completion. There are also free platforms like YouTube that contain a wealth of knowledgeable people creating free educational content such as mastering a new programming language.

Zoom Zoom Zoom!

We may not be able to meet in person, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t stay connected. The internet is an incredible tool that allows us to do just that. In addition, the internet’s capabilities can also be used to help you network as well. For example, Zoom is a video conferencing platform that allows users to set up virtual conference rooms. Many companies have turned to Zoom to conduct job interviews and stay connected to their staff. If you aren’t using Zoom already to connect with others professionally, now is a great time to start.

Polish your Social Media

As stated earlier, we all have a lot more time on our hands than before. One way you can use this time is to update your social media accounts. LinkedIn is the most popular social media site that recruiters use to find potential employees. Creating or polishing an existing LinkedIn account can help you appeal to potential employers and recruiters. Make sure that your profile is up to date with your current and past employment statuses. You can also utilize it to expound upon your employment experience and what you can bring to the table.

Maria is a writer at Enki Tech, a Downtown Santa Monica technology company that specializes in the development of high-quality, user friendly software, web platforms and mobile apps.
10 Feb 2021
Artificial Intelligence Permalink

Global AI Conferences Q1 2021

February 10, 2021
Over the last two decades, Artificial Intelligence has allowed us to digitize tasks normally reserved for human beings. Businesses, governments, and other organizations have recognized the benefit of this technology as they continue to integrate it into their everyday practices. Over the next year, there will be many conferences discussing the merit of this technology as well as its benefits and drawbacks. Below is a list of some of this year’s conferences to checkout.

AI in Payments & Fraud Risk Management (Europe) Summit – January 28 to 29, 2021

Deep Learning 2.0 Virtual Summit – January 28 to 29, 2021

AAAI Conference on Artificial intelligence – February 2 to 9, 2021

Data Science Virtual Salon | Healthcare, Finance & Technology – February 16 to 17, 2021

AIBC Summit – Malta – February 17 to 18, 2021

Global Artificial Intelligence Virtual Bootcamp – February 22 to 26, 2021

Ai4 2021 Finance Summit – March 3 to 4, 2021

AI For Human Language – March 5, 2021

ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction – March 8 to 11, 2021

ALT 2021 – Algorithmic Learning Theory – March 16 to 19, 2021

Videos

Maria is a writer at Enki Tech, a Downtown Santa Monica technology company that specializes in the development of high-quality, user friendly software, web platforms and mobile apps.
18 Dec 2020
Artificial Intelligence Permalink

Can Artificial Intelligence Transform the Travel Industry?

December 18, 2020
Artificial Intelligence is an emerging field of technology with the capability of making our lives easier in many ways. When broken down to its simplest definition, AI is the programming of machines to conduct tasks that typically require human intelligence. We can already see how Artificial Intelligence has been seamlessly integrated into our lives and businesses. For example, AI has been used to simplify data analysis and management, allowing companies to process the plethora of data they are deluged within seconds. And in recent years, technologists and computer scientists have begun to program AI with the ability to perform even more complex tasks, making AI a valuable asset for a business. Amongst those looking to benefit from this technology are business leaders in the travel industry.

The Travel Industry and COVID-19

The global travel and tourism industry is estimated to be worth around $2.9 trillion (2019). Travel has become more accessible to everyday people over the past few decades. The ability to travel and visit different countries has gone from a luxury saved for the very privileged few to an activity that more and more people can enjoy as airfare and lodging have become cheaper and more accessible. Many communities have also built their local economies on travel, with tourism being a significant source of income for them. The United States alone contributed approximately $580.7 billion to global tourism’s GDP. But like many industries in the year 2020, traveling and tourism took a nosedive due to a worldwide pandemic.

Traveling and COVID-19

The global COVID-19 pandemic has put a dent in many of our plans for 2020. The novel coronavirus or COVID-19 is a particularly contagious virus that is around ten times deadlier than the flu. The long-term effects that the virus will have on the health of those who have caught it is yet unknown, but many who have caught it and ‘survived’ have reported long-term lung, brain, and heart conditions, among other things. To combat the virus and stop the spread, almost every country on earth has restricted travel to their regions. And within each country, there are varying degrees of quarantine taking place to reduce the number of people exposed to the coronavirus from increasing. As a result, many industries took a great economic hit because of this and the global travel and tourism industry was hit particularly hard. Without a vaccine for COVID-19, traveling is risky. Airlines have had to reduce the number of people allowed to board flights to fight the spread. Hotels have also been advised to reduce the capacity to fill their buildings to ensure proper distance is being kept between customers.

But hope is on the horizon as several vaccines have entered their final testing phases and could be widely distributed as soon as the end of 2020. If the vaccines prove effective and enough of us receive them, we can significantly reduce the number of COVID-19 infections globally. Furthermore, once COVID-19 is under control, the travel and tourism industry will likely experience a boom as people globally look to leave their homes and explore the world again. If this is the case, Artificial Intelligence may help make travel and tourism easier, affordable, and profitable.

AI and Travel and Tourism

AI intelligence can greatly benefit the travel and tourism industry by helping automate and streamline tasks traditionally done by humans and reducing the amount of human error that occurs with these tasks. By automating work and simplifying the process, businesses can save money and utilize their freed-up time to make traveling more accessible and more convenient.

Customer service within the travel and tourism industry has been vastly improved since its introduction. Hotels, airlines, and automobile services regularly deal with many customers every day, and it can be hard to deliver the best customer service when employees are swamped with work. With the advent of social media and instant messaging, customers are even more eager to receive quick and satisfactory information in shorter and shorter time frames. While a single human can’t field hundreds of thousands of customer questions instantly, it is an easy task for a chatbot. Chatbots are AI-powered machines commonly used by many businesses to improve customer service by providing quick and accessible knowledge to customers’ frequently asked questions. A chatbot can be programmed to learn customer habits by analyzing common patterns in humans when using an app or website or when on social media. With the information the chatbot collects, it can learn to give answers to frequently asked questions.

AI can also be used to improve face-to-face interaction as well. Like a chatbot that can be accessed through social media or an app and utilized to answer customer questions, it is possible to build a robot to do the same tasks in person. For hotel operators and tourism agencies, a robotic helper could help reduce the workload on employees, allowing employees to focus more on quality regarding the customer service they provide. A robot can be programmed to understand speech, recognize specific questions, and deliver accurate information to these questions in response. Though we are still awaze away from having fully automated hotels, AI-powered robots that accompany and help receptionists are already here. The Hilton has already deployed such kinds of robots with its pilot program that it has started with IBM.

Data analysis and predictive analytics are essential tools for businesses looking to provide better services and save money. For the travel industry, AI has helped to make these processes a whole lot easier. Institutions like hotels, airlines, and car rental services rely on customer feedback to improve their services, so they often utilize tools like surveys to get a feel for where their customers are. As these institutions deal with hundreds of thousands of customers every day, it would be pretty impossible for a human being alone to process all the data they collect on their customers daily. AI is utilized to quickly analyze customer behavior and offer predictions about the market and future customer behavior and choices based on their information. With more data being processed every second, businesses can more accurately address their issues and provide innovative solutions to problems.

AI is not meant to replace human judgment but rather become another tool that we can use to improve our lives and our business operations. Only time will tell how these machines will improve the tourist experience, but the future looks promising.

11 Dec 2020
Technology Permalink

The Positive Impact of Google

December 11, 2020
It is hard to imagine a world without Google. Thanks to Google’s search engine, we can know more than ever before, and most information we need is easy to access online. Of course, Google is neither the first nor the only online search engine available for us to use, but it is one of the best and by far the most popular. But what makes Google’s search engine so great?

Google is Fast in its Delivery

Part of what makes an excellent online search engine is its ability to deliver relevant information as fast as possible. Google can provide the fastest results because they have perfected their hardware to do so. In under a second, one can find information on almost anything they can think of by simply “Googling” it. Google takes particular caution to make sure that its infrastructure is always working so that no matter the circumstances, we can still rely on Google as a premium search engine.

Google Houses A LOT of Information

Google is the fastest and most accurate search engine in the world. This is because Google’s database is vast! Every day Google processes about 20 petabytes of data from the billions of searches conducted on it. Using that data, they utilize machine learning technology to deliver the most meaningful results to their audience. Google also takes its time to update its hardware to store more and more information to provide new info to its users regularly.

Using Data, Google Stays Relevant

Sometimes it feels like Google already knows what I want to search for, even before typing my request into the search engine. However, Google also uses the plethora of data it collects and stores to remain relevant to its users. Using machine learning and predictive analytics, they can understand their user’s patterns and behavior and more accurately deliver the content they crave.

Google Succeeded in Branding Itself

Part of the success of Google’s search engine was their ability to brand themselves as the search engine that everyone wants to use. Many search engines like Yahoo and Bing work reasonably well, but they never come to mind when searching for something. However, unlike the competition, Google made itself be known not just by providing excellent service; they also advertised that they were a great service. From billboards to commercials featuring celebrities, Google made a name for itself as a brand.

Positive Impact of Google’s Search Engine

With Accurate and relevant information available to us at the click of a button, Google’s search engine has made information and learning much more accessible. What used to be reserved for those privileged enough to have academic work available is now available to everyone. When used properly, a search engine like Google’s makes gaining knowledge and spreading knowledge simple and easy. All one needs is a device capable of accessing the internet, and with smart technology more readily available, almost everyone can use Google.

11 Nov 2020
Artificial Intelligence Permalink

AI: Advancing Healthcare

November 11, 2020
The healthcare landscape is rapidly changing. We are quickly moving from a primarily paper-based healthcare system to one that is becoming increasingly digital. And in the wake of the global coronavirus pandemic, it has become even more critical for the healthcare sector to embrace technological advancement. Artificial Intelligence is one of the latest technologies that has seen a boom in the healthcare sector and has largely yielded positive results. The goal of any healthcare provider is to provide better, safer care for their patients while lowering the cost of overall care. AI can help the healthcare industry drastically improve and deliver better services for practitioners and patients alike.

Digital Health

Today more doctors and healthcare providers rely on digital health and medicine to provide remote care for their patients. Most healthcare providers allow you to schedule appointments and track your health online via their website or downloadable app. In addition, the website will enable doctors and patients to stay up to date on current patient medical issues.

Patients do not have to worry about scheduling multiple appointments to get test results or filling out tons of paperwork as more and more of their medical information can be easily stored online. Healthcare providers can send text messages and emails to patients reminding them to schedule their next visit. Patients can go to these digital platforms to get answers and stay updated on their medical history.

Digital health has also allowed doctors, nurses, and healthcare providers to administer help to patients who live in more rural and remote parts of the world that may not have access to a hospital. With just a smartphone and an internet connection, healthcare workers can provide necessary aid more swiftly or direct others to administer lifesaving first aid while waiting for emergency services.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is even more urgent that the healthcare industry invests in emerging technologies such as service robots and artificial intelligence that will allow them to provide care from a distance. Doctors and nurses are on the front line of fighting this virus and are more exposed than anyone else to the disease. With rapid increases every day in patients coming into the emergency room for symptoms related to the coronavirus, many hospitals are overworked and understaffed. Advancement in healthcare technology could allow them to administer better care to their patients both in and outside of the hospital. Service robots can help healthcare workers administer aid by following a healthcare worker’s commands. The service robot helps provide care to keep both patients and healthcare workers safer and more sanitary.

AI, in particular, could prove advantageous when it comes to administering aid in the operating room, diagnosing diseases, and providing patient care during recovery.

Integrating AI into Health

AI is a relatively new technology, with few currently utilizing it in the administration of health services. Still, the technology appears to be improving their ability to provide the best care for those who use it. AI has already proven useful for those in the medical cosmetics field, who have utilized the technology to access patient records and make determinations on operating procedures in the operating room in real-time, cutting down on the time they operate and eliminating the need to desterilized the OR. The AI can also control the temperature and lighting in the OR to ensure the optimum environment for operation.

Many healthcare providers are also utilizing chatbots in their practice to provide care digitally to their patients. Patients can speak with chatbots on the healthcare provider’s website and ask it common questions. The chatbot can be programmed to provide accurate and reliable answers by utilizing data it collects from numerous healthcare providers. In addition, Chatbots can help free up doctors’ time and administer more specialized care to their patients.

In the future, AI technology could even be used to help diagnose diseases. Theoretically, an AI could be programmed to recognize what certain conditions look like and use the information that it gathers to provide a proper diagnosis, much like a doctor. Researchers have already begun testing this with positive results. For example, Stanford researchers have successfully programmed an AI to diagnose skin cancer as accurately as a dermatologist.

Of course, more testing is necessary to determine if AI can and should be used for primary diagnostics, but the future of AI in healthcare looks promising. The market for AI technology in healthcare appears to be rapidly expanding as doctors and healthcare providers are finding more use for the technology in their practices. The AI in healthcare market is projected to grow from around $5 billion in 2019 to almost $100 billion by 2027.In addition, there will most likely be an increase in the desire to part due to integrating chatbots and apps to monitor patient care to reduce patients’ overall time in the hospital. In addition, there will most likely be an increase in the desire to part due to integrating chatbots and apps to monitor patient care to reduce patients’ overall time in the hospital.

AI Healthcare Companies

Many investors are eager to fund innovative technologies in the healthcare sector. As an emerging technology, AI has already proven valuable to healthcare. From Robo-nurses to surgical assistant bots to AI-powered automated dosing, AI has improved overall care and saved the hospital money. BY 2026, AI could help save the healthcare sector upwards of $150 billion. And there is an increasing market for healthcare companies to offer AI-powered services to their consumers. According to a Plug and Play article titled 9 Leading AI Healthcare Companies in 2020, the top AI-powered healthcare services companies include: Remedy Health, Subtle Medical, Quid, BioSymetrics, Sensely, InformAI, SaliencyAI, Owkin, and Binah.ai. These companies stand out for making diagnostics easier, improving hospital workflow, and processing and standardizing data faster and more efficiently for hospitals. Overall the services they provide can help make the jobs of doctors, nurses, and healthcare providers much easier and much more streamlined, allowing them to treat and deliver better services for their patients and save money and time.

When it comes to integrating new software and emerging technology into healthcare, the most critical factor that healthcare providers must consider is the quality of care that these technologies will allow them to administer to their patients. After all, it is their job to help us feel better, so the technology they invest in should operate to align with those goals. Even as technological advancements allow for quicker diagnostics and care administration, it cannot replace humans in providing the empathy that healthcare providers must have to care for their patients properly. Technology, however, can help them deliver more sterile care and help them reach patients who live far away, and keep patient files organized and secure. Thus, technology can be a valuable tool to make the job of healthcare providers more manageable and allow them to give their patients the best care possible.

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